Gal Gadot hits out at Netanyahu over 'Jewish people' comment

"It is not a matter of right or left, Arabs or Jews, secular or religious. It is a matter of dialogue, of dialogue for peace," the actress said.

Gal Gadot was crowned Miss Israel in 2004. She later dropped out of law school to become an actress.Dia Dipasupil / Getty Images file

Breaking News Emails

Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.

March 11, 2019, 12:32 PM GMT / Updated March 11, 2019, 12:35 PM GMT

By F. Brinley Bruton and Yael Factor

"Wonder Woman" star Gal Gadot waded into the debate over what it means to be Israeli after Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the country is the homeland "only of the Jewish people."

"Love thy neighbor," the Israeli actress said Sunday on Instagram, where she has 28.3 million followers.

"It is not a matter of right or left, Arabs or Jews, secular or religious," she added. "It is a matter of dialogue, of dialogue for peace, and of our tolerance for each other. It is our responsibility to shine hope and light for a better future for our children."

Earlier Sunday, Netanyahu addressed "slightly confused people" on Instagram after model and actor Rotem Sela — a friend of Gadot's — defended the rights of Arab Israelis. The minority makes up around 20 percent of the country's population.

"Israel is not a state for all its citizens. According to the nation-state law that we passed, Israel is the state of the Jewish people — and belongs to them alone," Netanyahu wrote.

Israel's approval of a "nation-state" law, which declares that only Jews have the right of self-determination in the country and downgrades Arabic as an official language, dismayed the country's minorities last year. Supporters said the law was mainly a symbolic gesture, while Netanyahu and others in his Likud party said it was necessary to counter Palestinian challenges to Jewish self-determination.

Sela had denounced Netanyahu's frequent talking point that his political rivals will form a government with Arab political parties after the April 9 elections.

In his Instagram post responding to Sela, Netanyahu added: “As you wrote, there's no problem with the Arab citizens of Israel — they have the same rights as us all and the Likud government has invested in the Arab sector more than any other government."